One year ago, I looked at the demand for EHR related certifications. I found, as the old line goes, that many are called but few are chosen. Of 30 or so certificate programs, only about a quarter had substantial demand. In fact, 1 had no demand.

Study Update

Finding Certification Programs. To bring the study up to date, I looked for new certificates or ones I’d overlooked. I found one, CEHRS, Certified Electronic Health Record Specialist Certification from the National Healthcareer Association.

Searching for Jobs. As with last year’s study, I then used John’s HealthcareITCentral to search for jobs posted in the last 30 days that require an EHR or HIT certification.

Certifications Reviewed

Table I lists the 12 certifications, which had at least one job opening. Last year, I found at least 16 certifications with at least one opening. That is, this year as shown in Table II, I found no mentions for 15 certificates.

What Counts. Each certification listed in a job counts as one opening. For example, if a job listed ComTIA, CPHIMS and CPEHR, I counted it as three jobs, one for each certification.

General certifications only. For practical reasons, this review only covers general certifications that have a one word abbreviation. Where the abbreviation isn’t unique, I’ve filtered out non certificate uses.

No EDUs. I excluded certificates from colleges, universities, etc., whether traditional or on line. There are scads of these, but I’m not aware of any that are in general demand. That’s not a judgment on their value, just their demand.

Dynamics. The openings for these certifications are a snapshot. The job market and the openings that HealthcareITCentral lists constantly change. What is true now, could change in a moment. However, I believe it gives you a good idea of relative demand.

Certification Demand

In the past 30 days, I found 322 openings that listed a certification. See Chart I. As with last year, AHIMA’s were most in demand. Two of its certificate programs, RHIA and RHIT account for 60 percent of certificate demand.

RHIA’s designed to show a range of managerial skills, rather than in depth technical ability. If you consider certifications proof of technical acumen, then the strong RHIA demand is a bit counter intuitive. Where the RHIA has a broad scope, the close second, RHIT, is more narrowly focused on EHRs.

In third place, but still with a substantial demand is CCS, which focuses on a specific ability. Compared to last year, CCS has fewer openings. This is due to a change in my methodology not demand. Last year, I counted any CCS opening. This year, I only count those with a clear HIT relationship.

Certification Location Demand

After looking at certification demand, I looked at it by state. To do this, I merged the different certification job openings into a single list. That is, I added those for RHIA, RHIT, etc., and then eliminated duplicates.

After creating a consolidated list, I sorted and subtotaled by state. I then sorted the state totals. This gave me the data for Chart II. It shows the top ten states for openings, including/ two ties.

State Rankings. As you might expect, states with the largest populations have the most jobs. California leads, which is what you’d expect.

To account for population, I take job rank from population rank. For example, Washington State is 13th in population. It’s eight in job openings. So, subtracting job rank eight from population rank 13 is five. That is, Washington State’s job share is five ranks above its population ranking. Chart III shows the result where states stand when you account for population.

Most notable is Colorado. Colorado is 22nd in population, but fifth in certification demand. That is job openings for it are 17 ranks higher than population would account for.

Others ranking higher than their population are: Missouri, Arizona, Tennessee, Wisconsin, etc. Conversely, those states, which have openings below their rank, include New York, Pennsylvania and Florida.

Missouri’s case is interesting. Almost all its openings are from one company: Altegra. Its openings are almost all for one position type: medical record field reviewer. At first, I thought this was a case of over posting, but it doesn’t appear to be. They’re recruiting for several different locations.

Certification Demand Trends

When I stated this update, I expected there would be more jobs due to economic growth, but that hasn’t happened. There’ve been shifts among states, but overall the demand is pretty much the same. RHIA and RHIT demand last year and this year are practically identical while demand for others has dropped. I don’t have any numbers for overall openings then and now, but I suspect that they’ve grown while certification demand has either gone down or been flat. However, as I’ve said that’s just a guess.

Certifications are a response to the demand for persons with demonstrated skills. The question is whether a one will reward your time, cost and effort with something that is marketable. Demand alone can’t make that choice for you. For example, working on a certificate that has little or no demand might seem pointless. However, its requirements may be a good way for you to acquire demonstrate your skills, especially if your experience is iffy.

Personal satisfaction also can’t be discounted as a factor. You might be interested in an area with low demand, but when coupled with your other skills might make you marketable in an area you desire.

If you do decide to pursue one of these certificates, I think these numbers can help you know where to look and what to look for.

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Choosing an EHR/EMR is a hard task. For many years, we hosted the EHRSelector, which we designed to help you pick an EHR by features. It had the most granular feature list on the web. When we were not able to entice enough vendors participation, we closed the system. However, we believe our feature list is unique and useful, so you can download it here: EHR Selector Feature List. We also will continue to write about EHR related issues.